Head of Housing Needs & Refugee Services

Discover yourself in Lewisham where what you do makes a difference to our vibrant and culturally diverse communities! We have a rich history of welcoming people from all over the world and are proud to be recognised as the UK's first Borough of Sanctuary, for our work in championing the rights of refugees and migrants.

Lewisham Council's Housing Service is recruiting a Head of Housing Needs and Refugee Services. It's an exciting time to join us. Lewisham is a vibrant and rewarding place to live and work - full of ambition, energy and a huge amount of potential. Our people are passionate, diverse and engaged in the work we do. We are proud of our strong, welcoming communities and of being recognised as the UK's first borough of Sanctuary.

It's also a challenging time for us, with significant financial pressure and increasing demand for our services. We work to ensure everyone has a safe, stable and genuinely affordable home where they can live an independent and prosperous life. We are one of London's busiest homelessness and housing needs service with an anticipated three and a half thousand homeless approaches this year. With only nine-hundred social homes available each year, we must be innovative in our work to resettle as many of our residents facing homelessness into the private rented sector. We are tackling this challenge head-on through a bold and transformative agenda of operational and cultural change that is already underway.

We are looking for a dynamic and ambitious Head of Service with proven experience in leading housing needs and refugee resettlement services. In this pivotal role, you will also be responsible for overseeing substantial budgets and monitoring the use of grant funding, while driving forward service improvement and transformational change across the service and the directorate. This is a rare opportunity to take on a high-impact leadership role at a time of significant change and innovation.

Reporting to the Director of Housing Strategy, the Head of Housing Needs and Refugee Services oversees a high-impact, fast-improving service delivering critical support to residents who are in housing need. You will be responsible for providing strategic direction for homelessness prevention, housing options, temporary accommodation and resettlement for our clients. Alongside, you will also lead our refugee resettlement and no recourse to public funds service.

This is an ambitious job with an ambitious future, operating in a challenging local and national environment. We are looking for our new post-holder to inspire a culture of innovation and be relentless in their pursuit of delivering a high-quality, efficient and responsive service for our clients.

Managing a service of up to 120 staff and a budget of over £20 million, the post-holder will lead a diverse range of teams. They will ensure that our statutory homelessness services is customer centric and managed to a high standard. They will manage the commissioning and management of the required temporary accommodation supply, and increase our use of the private rented sector to find stable accommodation for our service users. Above all, they will drive the service forward, to ensure that the service meets the needs of our clients, the Council and wider stakeholders.

We are looking for a strategic and inspirational leader who can demonstrate strong experience of leading homelessness and procurement services in a demanding environment. You will need to have skills and experience to build strong partnerships across key public and voluntary sector stakeholder organisations. If you're inspired by the opportunity to shape the future of our service and confident in your ability to lead with impact, we want to hear from you.

In return, we’ll offer excellent development opportunities, plus a range of benefits that include a career average pension scheme, flexible working and the opportunity to make a real difference to our local community.

Location: The job is primarily based in Laurence House, Catford but we operate a hybrid approach where you will be required to work both in the office and from home on a regular basis.

The recruitment process is anonymous and we don’t accept CVs. Applicant handbook - please read the guidance in this handbook when applying. It is essential that you complete the application fully and that your supporting statement covers how you meet each of the person specification criteria listed.

Diversity: We value diversity and welcome applications from all backgrounds. Lewisham Council is a Disability Confident employer. We welcome and encourage job applications of all abilities. If you require any reasonable adjustments in the application or interview, please contact the lead contact on this advert. We will make reasonable adjustments to make sure our disabled applicants and those with health conditions are supported throughout our recruitment process.

The Council has a dedicated employment support service, Lewisham Works, which offers Lewisham residents guidance in relation to applying for jobs.